Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Getting Back At It

Wow! I knew I had been away for a while, but I'm surprised to realize it's been nearly 6 months! I suppose that makes sense. That's right about the time my job took over my life and I was working seriously crazy hours. I'm back to something more manageable now.

As my job took over, my healthy habits took a dive. I quit exercising regularly, quit planning meals, gained 10 pounds and constantly felt sluggish. Once the New Year arrived I found myself finally finished with that project at work, refreshed from some time off over the holidays and ready to return to my healthy habits.

For nearly 10 years (the last 6 months notwithstanding) I have been following (more or less) the healthy lifestyle suggestions recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil. I've had great success following his advice and have experienced many health improvements as a result. I plan to share more details on that in a future post.

However, something interesting happened as I prepared to resume eating and living the Weil way. I stumbled across Mark Sisson's blog, Mark's Daily Apple. As I started reading through his blog entries I became more and more intrigued by what he calls the Primal Blueprint. Much of it falls in line with the lifestyle recommendations of Dr. Weil. The main difference is in the dietary recommendations. Dr. Weil makes whole grains and legumes a staple in his eating plan. Mark recommends avoiding them completely.

Mark presents a lot of good reasons for that advice and I found the logic compelling enough to give Primal Blueprint a trial run. I'm sure Weil would approve. He recommends experimenting (within reason) to see what effects dietary, supplement or lifestyle changes might have.

It's been about 2 weeks since I started this experiment and so far, so good. I plan to share more about the Primal Blueprint, my implementation and the effects in future posts. With any luck, they'll come more frequently than once every 6 months.

3 comments:

  1. Welcome back.
    I like Mark's blog and agree with most of primal dietary recommendations. The only problem I have is (and I don't really think it is Mark but rather forum people) is fats. I don't think our primal ancestors were gorging on butter or lard. Well they would have if they had access to it. :)
    I fell out of love with Andrew Weil when I started getting his newsletter years ago full of solicitations for supplements.
    I wonder which approach will work better for you. Good luck.
    Hope you are not living in one of the snow battered areas.

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  2. Thanks for stopping by, Ewa! It seems that we've got several things in common. I notice you've got a blog written in Polish. Both my husband and I have Polish roots though neither of us speaks the language (at least, not more than a few words that I learned from my Grandma).

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  3. My Polish blog is me being lazy and not having to write letters to my Polish family. I blog, they e-mail. Who needs handwriting anymore. :)

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